Xiaomi Mi Box S Android 8.1 Netflix Certified TV Box Review

Xiaomi Mi Box S Review

So today I have the review of my first Xiaomi TV box and this model is the Xiaomi Mi Box S. So Xiaomi has been in the TV box Market since the beginning of the TV box Evolution and they have released many models, however, due to low hardware specs in the earlier models I saw it not worthwhile to do a review of one of their models, because I felt that the performance would have been affected by the Low End Hardware being used in their boxes. However, their latest model looks promising, and I also wanted to see what Netflix in HD on a certified Netflix TV box looks like. This model claims to be fully certified to show Netflix in 4K resolution, something many TV box users has been trying to get for some time, on the mini TV box manufacturers claiming Netflix on the boxes shows in HD quality. So in this review we will prove just how true that is.

GVBOXSMIXR 56.99$

Hardware

CPU – Amlogic S905X Cortex A53 Quad Core (1.5GHz)

GPU – Mali 450 single core (750Mhz)

RAM – 2GB DDR2

ROM – 8GB eMMc Flash

WiFi – 2.4GHz + 5.8GHz Dual band

LAN – NA none on the box

Bluetooth – 4.1

USB – 2.0

Remote – Wireless voice remote

Looking at these hardware specs I think that Xiaomi could have done a little better with the inclusion of more internal storage to about 32GB because I have included at least 4GB of RAM. They could have used a better Hardware that would have allowed another user to have at least two USB ports including a USB 3.0 port.

IO Ports

This is the first TV box that I have ever reviewed that has the least amount of ports recorded all you get on the Xiaomi Mi Box S s is one HDMI port, one USB 2.0 port, 1 audio port, and a DC power input. This makes it quite difficult to use more than one USB external device at the same time for example, using a USB flash drive and trying to use a wireless air mouse at the same time.

Netflix in HD / 4K

I believe the selling point for this TV box is a fact that it is fully certified Netflix device. And this is quite true in the settings area you can see the Netflix registered information also during the video test you could clearly see that Netflix poster HD next to the video. This is something not seen and other TV boxes, you normally see the video playing in in an acceptable quality, but you don’t ever see the HD next to the video before in the in the description area before playing. This brings me to the conclusion but if you do not see this in your Netflix video it means that your video is playing in 720p quality. And I would like to give the Xiaomi Mi S TV box the thumbs-up for achieving this.

YouTube / Streaming / 4K Playback

The good news is YouTube and movie streaming apks please in the highest quality. YouTube please in 4k quality and you can download all of the latest movie streaming apks from your Aptoide app store or you can download them onto a flash drive and install onto the Box by your side loading. I ran my usual set of 4K video samples and the Box managed to play most of them however there were few of the samples of failed to play which means that the newer boxes on the market have a little Edge on this TV box.

3D Gaming

When it comes to gaming the Xiaomi Mi box S did pretty okay however, there was one particular game which was why FIFA game had a bit of rendering issues

Benchmarks

Antutu – 34905

Geekbench 4 – 650 Single-Core / 1816 multi-core

IceStorm Extreme – 4187

RAM Copy – 2321.40 MB/s

ROM Speed – 79.95 MB/s Read. NA Write

WiFI – Max speed on 5.8GHz only

Final Thoughts

The xiaomi Mi box s is the first Android TV box dot-com play Netflix in full HD on 4K quality it also has all the features of a fully certified Android TV installation like Chromecast on YouTube in 4k quality. It comes with all the necessary DRM support and it does not come rooted which is all part of a box being certified to play Netflix in HD. However the books has some shortcomings for example it does not have an Ethernet LAN port it only has one USB port, it cannot play certain types of formats of 4K videos, and it struggle to play one of my high-end football games. So the selling point of this box really is its ability to run Netflix in HD quality, YouTube in 4k quality, and you’re running the full version of Android TV OS was granted Chrome-cast ability.

Hi Gordon, the 2.4GHz band is really crappy the 5.8GHz band works way better. As for the DTS audio passthrough I connected it to my pioneer receiver and ran Netflix movie, and he DTS icon and the Dolby icon came on so yes, it does have DTS audio passthrough. Go to audio in the settings area and ensure digital sounds is set to 100%. Try hard resetting your receiver that’s the advice I have.